I predict we'll all — most of us — go to Helle.

You think she's off the norm — the gleeful, man-magnetizing Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who took the famous funeral selfie with Barack Obama and David Cameron leaning into the shot.

But I think this is where we are going. Years ago, we scoffed or cried out in horror at the man who walked down the street talking on a cell phone. Why, he seemed like those crazy people who walk and talk to phantoms. Doesn't he know how ridiculous and presumptuous and into himself he looks? Can we even remember how intensely we experienced that disapproval of walking cell-phone talkers?

Helle Thorning-Schmidt — love the name! — assures us the mood in the stadium was "festive," and it was not wrong to take a selfie, and, indeed, she thinks all the fuss is "funny."

Thorning-Schmidt declined to talk about the way Michelle Obama looked. Me, when I look at the famous photo of the photographing — the second one down at the link — I see Michelle existing in the old world — where most of us are — and the other 3 having entered the next stage. Some day, we'll look back and think we're all relaxed and free to quickly record the occasion, even if it's a funeral. After all, lots of people come together at funerals. They are great reunions and celebrations of the life that has ended. We see the life in ourselves and in each other on these occasions, and perhaps this is the last time we will be here together like this. Take the selfie!

Picture yourself in the casket and: 1. Take a selfie now before it's too late, and 2. Ask yourself if you'd like the people who showed up for your funeral to feel they need to sit stiff and grim like poor last-century Michelle or if you prefer Helle?

"In the days when success in life had depended on marriage, and marriage had depended on money, novelists had a subject to write about."

"The great epics sang of war, the novel of marriage. Sexual equality, good for women, had been bad for the novel. And divorce had undone it completely. What would it matter whom Emma [Bovary] married if she could file for separation later?"

Says a character in the Jeffrey Eugenides’ novel "The Marriage Plot," reviewed here.

Eugenides, speaking for himself, made a virtually identical argument in Slate several years ago, substituting “Anna Karenina” for “Madame Bovary”: “You can’t have your heroine throw herself under a train because she left her husband and ruined her life. Now your heroine would just have a custody battle and remarry.”

Oh, yeah? And what about cell phones? They're wreaking havoc on hack plots. Of course, the answer is to throw in some bit about how there's no signal or the battery is dead.

There must be a stock list of reasons why a modern-day woman cannot divorce. 1. Make her religious, 2. Inheritance, 3. Children, 4. Husband gives access to some needed social or business network, 5. Hey, I'm not a writer of plots! You figure it out, writer man.

The nightmare of flying just got a little more complicated.

"The Federal Aviation Administration will allow airlines to expand passengers' use of portable electronic devices during all phases of flight, the agency announced today, but cell phone calls will still be prohibited," says a "Breaking News" email from CNN.

I'm guessing the cell phones are still prohibited because we really cannot tolerate a plane full of people yakking on their cell phones. And yet... flying on a plane is an ordeal in the toleration of other people. Those of us who are too sensitive to endure it are not on that plane, which means that if you are, you're there with a plane full of insensitive people.

I know that's not completely true. Some people are forced to fly. Or rather: everyone on any plane has some reason to be there that outweighs the unpleasantness of the experience. It just takes more for some of us than others. And now we can use iPads and laptops to watch movies and play video games and work work work. The question for any given would-be passenger is: Does that add to the pro or the con side of flying?

In the future, the planes will be full of people who are there having weighed the pros and cons under the new rule. And when you see (or think about) what that's like, you'll have to redo your own weighing of reasons to fly against the unpleasantness of the experience. Am I going to be sitting between 2 guys playing video games while someone behind me pounds away on a laptop on the tray-table attached to my seat?

ADDED: I do realize that today's rule change relates only to the takeoff and landing phases and that devices have been common on flights for a long time. The "now" in paragraph 3, above, was intended to refer to the way things have been recently and awkwardly to the new extension of freedom to use devices. As for weighing the pros and cons of the new rule: If the absence of the use of devices was a comfort, it was only a small comfort, in part of the flight. Changing the rule at least ends the pestering by flight attendants. Overall, I like the rule change. I need reading or listening material on a plane, and I don't want to have to think about or to carry the weight of a paper book to tide me over during the takeoff and landing phases. I especially don't like being woken up half an hour before landing to be told to turn off the audiobook that enabled me to fall and to stay asleep.

Perseverating about shoes before 7 a.m.

Woken by a phone call from the demonic "Blocked," I make coffee at 6 a.m. and sit down to approve the comments that collected in my "awaiting moderation" folder overnight. Somehow that sets me off to writing 5 comments in the thread about shoes. The coffee kicked in spiked by the false sunrise and the poetry it inspired and I got myself retracked onto the front page, where, looking back now, I feel like the blog has a theme today. It's something like: We're always only seeing things from our own point of view. (Dylan lyric: "We always did feel the same/We just saw it from a different point of view.")

So what did I say — about shoes?? — before sanity kicked in at 7? Highlights from the comments:

... there are things you feel you need to do in NYC that you look almost foolish doing around here. I see some young women around campus mincing about on heels when no one else is. There isn't one man around who is dressed to go with that. It's as if she's on her way to a party that exists only in her mind....

Take a good look at yourself in the mirror when you've got your shorts on. Ask yourself if I were a woman, would I fuck me? (The question, put that way, assumes you are not a gay man. If you are a gay man, you don't need advice from me on how you look to other men.)....

I'm vulnerable to the criticism that I've promoted women's shoes that are like little girl shoes and that's inconsistent with saying shorts infantilize men. I'm treading -- in Mary Janes -- on dangerous ground!

Those shoe comments reveal that...
	Althouse should be permitted to wake up naturally.
	The comments section is a good place to hide the crazy.
	Early morning Althouse belongs on the front page and should happen more often.
	Althouse needs to resist defending her posts from whatever the hell gets dropped in the comments.
	There really are some serious issues about sex and shoes that demand exploration.
pollcode.com free polls

"I forgot my phone."

"The harrowing last pleas... were left in a lengthy voice mail on a friend’s phone..."

"... though prosecutors wouldn’t say whether she accidentally or purposely dialed the woman for help."

Prove you're not a photograph.

If I were to get the "wrinkle your forehead" test, I could not do it. And not just because I have bangs. I cannot make that horizontal lines thing happen.

"Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama."

The Guardian reports:

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.

Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.

"Judge holds self in contempt for his phone ringing in court, pays $25 fine."

"He says if he can't live by the rules he enforces he has no business enforcing the rules."

"Prosecutors said today they will seek the death penalty for Colorado movie theater shooting suspect James Holmes."

"Holmes had offered to plead guilty and spend the rest of his life behind bars in exchange for avoiding the death penalty."

Holmes is accused of opening fire in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater on July 20, 2012, killing 12 people and injuring 58. By the time he had finished, a police officer has testified, there was so much blood the theater floor had become slippery. Bodies were left with horrific injuries and there was the eerie sound of cell phones ringing, over and over again....

Breaking news email from CNN.

"Would You Rather Have Google Glass or a Smart Watch?"

"When you think of the world five years from now, do you picture the masses wearing smart eyewear or Dick Tracy-style smart watches?"

I see the problem with Google Glass — it will probably make most people look stupid and even if you happen to be someone who might look cool, people won't give you credit for looking cool because they'll feel that you're intruding on them in ways they don't even quite understand. Are you streaming me to the whole world? Are you finding out things that will be used to take advantage of me? That is, either you'll either make yourself look stupid or you'll make other people feel that you're making them look stupid. Must we all self-defensively gear up? And what's to stop people from snatching those things right off your face? Not only will they attract the traditional thief, they may provoke drunks and other hotheads to grab them and break them, the way bullies in old movies used to swipe the nerd's glasses and stomp on them.

But a Smart Watch... what's the point? I used to wear a watch, but I stopped when I got a cell phone which was fully capable of informing me of the time. I carry the phone in a pocket or a handbag, and what's my motivation to strap it to my wrist? I realize that's what people with pocket watches must have said when the original wristwatches came out.

And, now that I think of it, I have engaged in some activities — e.g., running — where I've rigged a less-than-perfect way to bring the iPhone along. (I've carried it in my hand, stuck it inside a sports-bra, and bought a little "waist pack" gizmo.) And I've been in situations — e.g., paddleboarding — where I needed some waterproof container, didn't have one, then bought something that was clumsy, ugly, and hard to use. And when I go swimming, I'm forced to leave the phone in the car/hotel room or I've got to hide it under a towel and then worry that someone will steal it. So, okay, the Smart Watch would be pretty useful, especially if it's cheap, comfortable, waterproof, and doesn't make you a theft target. Make it not work if someone else has it (and inform the thief community).

So I'm voting: Smart Watch.

Human behavior in the year 2013.

(Enlarge.)

That's from my colleague Nina, who was getting off a plane in Milan, on the way to Gargnano.

The line-up of right hands in the distinctive cell-phone half-clench is so funny, and it must be happening constantly, everywhere.

Purchase of the day.

From the March 22, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Bikemate Slim Case 3 for iPhone 5, 4S, 4, 3GS, 3G, BlackBerry Torch, HTC EVO, HTC Inspire 4G, HTC Sensation, Droid X, Droid Incredible, Droid 2, Droid 3, Samsung EPIC, Galaxy S II, Galaxy S III
by Satechi (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $2.40)

... and 38 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyers — through the Althouse Amazon portal.

Thanks, now get up on your bike. And remember - no texting whilst pedalling. IT'S THE LAW!

"Thief steals woman's phone — then posts picture of himself smoking weed to HER Facebook page."

"The thief didn't know that her cell phone was linked to her Facebook account and set to automatically post pics."

The notion that technology is the reason the murder rate has fallen by half.